How much do you spend on food per month?

candygirl

I spend on average £130 for me, n 3 dogs, but am trying to lower it
Eta this includes loo rolls, washing powder n cleaning stuff too!

kboss2010

MRSTITTLEMOUSE wrote: »

you wouldn't care to share the quantities for the butternut curry. Sounds lovely.

No worries!

To make a batch that’s for 4 generous portions:

1 diced butternut squash
1 medium diced onion
1 can chickpeas
1 packet passata (about 400 mls)
1 tub creme fraiche (about 300mls)
1 tbsp garam masala
3 finely chopped/minced garlic cloves
1 tbsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tbsp sweet or 1 tsp hot paprika (optional - depends if you like your curries slightly spicy or just sweet but you can leave it out)
4 or 5 cardamom pods (crushed with the flat side of a large knife & seeds removed, throw away the shells - if you do this, you get the flavour but you won’t get a mouthful of cardamom pod!)
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 crumbled veg stock cube
Salt & pepper to taste

Use a casserole-type pan with a lid (wide & deep)
- Fry the onion with the spices, stock cube & garlic until it is soft (use either oil or water to stop them from drying out & don’t let them burn)
- Add passata & creme fraiche & mix
- Add butternut squash & chickpeas, mix & simmer on a low heat with the lid on until the chickpeas & butternut squash are soft

I serve it with either garlic & herb naan (50p for 2 in Aldi) or basmati rice.

It also works really well with chicken.

trailingspouse

I don't think £50 a week is too bad really. But if you need to reduce it there are lots of threads/forums on here that will help - eating out of the cupboards and freezer, debt-free-wannabe, any amount of talk about meal planning, and so on.

Looking at my weekly spend, if I was wanting/needing to reduce it I would miss out the alcohol, buy less meat, and cut out the ready meals. Stick to fresh fruit and veg, cook from scratch, plan your meals ahead, and use up all the leftovers. I reckon I could get down to £30 if I had to (that's shopping at Aldi).
As for buying lunches etc a quick way to get a grasp of how much it's costing you is to multiply by 10. So - £2.50 on a sandwich every day is £25 every two weeks (assuming you work 5 days a week). Or £50 every 4 weeks. That's quite a lot.

GreyQueen

Hmm, singleton with no pets, I spent £66.90 in October, which is fairly typical. That included a fair bit of spaving by stocking up on one particular product and buying some things which are tucked into the freezer for eating in November or beyond. The spacing accounted for £18 of the total but will save me money in the coming months.


The budget includes things like non-food household consumables eg TP, cleaning products etc. A high-spend month for me would be about £70, a low spend about £45. I eat a lot of veggies and fruit, modest amounts of meat and fish. No alcohol, as I rarely drink any.

[Deleted User]

I am similar to GQ and spend ,depending on my purse and inclinations between £45 -£60 per month But I am out to an evening meal at least twice a week sometimes more,(been three times since Sunday this week)

I cook from scratch as I have the time ,being retired, I never bin anything thats in the least edible .I spend about a third on fresh fruit and veg and like my late Mum ,bless her ,can make a shilling do the work of five I make my own biscuits and cakes and soup (Y/S veg is great for this) and I also have a great barter exchange going with friends who over produce things in their garden or have surplus apples ,rhubarb,onions etc A fruit cake in exchange for a bag of 'fallers' it always welcome .
I forage locally with my DGS for blackberries and they always last me through the winter.I either make pies or will mix the berries into plain yogurt or ice cream or on cereal.
Menu planning is a must and any leftovers, if not frozen, will be used as part of next nights dinner.

I rarely drink as I drive most days and have in fact over a dozen bottles of wine in the cupboard from winnings at quiz nights (once a week where I get a meal with the quiz for £2.00, (a bargain and a night off from cooking )
Nothing goes to waste in my house and I have a freezer full of odds and ends that I am in the process of running down to defrost
Plus I only use cash and have a seperate purse for my food shopping money and when its empty thats it until the following month.I will go to the bank this morning and withdraw £60 and it will go in my old brown food purse for this month.Anything left over goes into my holiday account Today I have about £14.00 odd left to get stashed into the holiday account from October. I use any vouchers I can find if they are useful to me or pass them on to my friends if not.I don't eat ready-meals or take-aways as I can cook twice the amount for half the price But then I have been cooking for over 60 years and had a lot of practice :):) Its often surprising what you can make out of very little

JackieO xx

Novice_investor101

I'm single, so I spend around £50 a month. That includes household stuff & toiletries.
I used to spend way more - nearer £70 a month, until I ditched Tesco for Aldi. I also was trying to lose weight this year & downloaded the myfitnesspal app to track calories. That really brought home how much expensive but nutritionally deficient processed rubbish I was buying.

So now I eat much healthier & it's saved me money too as I tend to cook from scratch or have "simple" meals, like a piece of grilled meat, frozen vegetables & boiled new potatoes. No more frozen ready meals & calorie/sugar laden snacks.

katiepants

Our food budget is £150 per month for 2 adults, including toiletries and cleaning/household products. I shop at Aldi for most stuff, and then go to Morrisons for branded items I can't get at Aldi, or for some things that are just better from Morrisons.

My bf eats large portions, he is dairy free (meaning soya milk etc.), and we eat a lot of meat, but I find the £150 perfectly do-able. I meal plan (normally weekly, but this month I've done it for a whole month!), batch cook, and take advantage of reduced items etc. also use a lot of own brand items (why pay more just for different packaging)

[Deleted User]

having done a small stock today , take this month it will be as little as possible in the hope of shifting my food mountain from the cupboards :):

LameWolf

It varies month-on month; depends if I need to buy several things that only get bought once in a blue moon in one month.

I do my spreadsheets calendar-monthly, and so far this year, the highest spent has been £202.87 in a month, and the lowest £135.97.

That's for two adults. We don't do takeaways. Ever. I dislike them.

Oh, and my DH can eat for England!:D

Jaffapig

I’ll try to answer a few replies in one (apologies for all the exclamation marks throughout I got excited!)

- Re: Aldi/Lidl – this is probably blasphemy on this board but I absolutely hate shopping in these supermarkets due to their cramped aisles and the fact a loved one used to work in one and they were awful employers. I don’t feel like I can get everything I need from them and I really dislike the quality of some products. Having said that – some products are totally fine and I enjoy browsing the "aisle of s***" as I affectionately call it, I enjoy the variety of unexpected goods in there!
However what’s really swung it for me is just yesterday I discovered I can get an endless supply of old cardboard boxes/trays that I can use as disposable guinea pig beds which will be handy for keeping them warm this Winter! Since I’m not quite so shameless as to go in weekly and just nick boxes I’ll have to buy something. I think I will bite the bullet and do a part shop in our local Aldi and the rest in Tesco. Both are on my way home from work so it’s hardly an inconvenience from that respect.

- Good idea on the cafetiere for soups. Fortunately I don’t like coffee and am not one of these Starbucks-frequenting types so no money spent there

- I am too scared to do a spending diary on food! I am actually quite uptight about money as my partner will tell you but groceries is my major blindspot. Everything else is itemised on a spreadsheet except groceries/home purchases which are simply marked ‘credit card’ and doesn’t go into any further detail than that! But we need to face up to it now – can’t coast along like this with the lunches in particular forever. Now we've just bought a house the home purchase are adding a bit to the credit card bill each month so the food needs to be reigned in. I am going to do a meal plan today. I have done this in the past but usually fall down by week 2 to be honest.

- Included in the meal plan will be that butternut curry recipe, thank you!

- Lovely butter/fruit and veg exchange you have going there Jackie

- Have just moved to a house of our very own and it has a little greenhouse and a perfect spot for a veg patch. As a minimum I just want to grow some of the veg I give to the guinea pigs so I can stop buying so much for them (lettuce and cucumber to start)

- I am a bit gutted as I collected a huge number of blackcurrants from a bush in our old house and froze them but our fridge freezer died (only 2months old!) and we lost everything in the freezer and the meat in the fridge. Berries had gone all mushy and everything somehow got covered in defrosted raw chicken fluid (almost as if the chicken had exploded!). It was fixed just yesterday (only 4 weeks without!:mad:)

- I would love to get better at freezing leftover bits in a useful form for later (e.g. breadcrumbs). I’m not very smart at this atm.

- Katiepants – what you’re doing sounds in line with what I’d be aiming for, except will be Tesco instead of Morrisons. Also I have been ordering a veg box but had to cancel that due to being wasteful and loosing the fridge to store them in. When I can get our act together I may start that up again. I don’t mind paying a bit more for nice veg if it’s all used up.

- What does y/s stand for please?

- Right, time to make my meal plan!